Cold air funnel seen near I-90, Cheney

Weather watchers spotted what is known as a cold air funnel near Interstate 90 between Cheney and Medical Lake late Tuesday afternoon.

A cold air funnel has the appearance of a tornado but is a lot weaker and usually stays up in the atmosphere.

“They’re very common around here, actually,” National Weather Service forecaster Bob Tobin said. “They’re a spring and fall phenomenon.”

They usually occur behind a cold front in unsettled weather, which describes what was happening in the sky Tuesday afternoon. Cold air and warm air mix, rotation begins and a funnel is created.

“It’s got rotation so it is tornadic, but they very rarely hit the ground,” Tobin said.

Sometimes a few things get blown over, but a cold air funnel rarely causes significant damage, Tobin said.

The Spokane office of the National Weather Service usually gets sent several pictures of cold air funnels every year.

“This one I actually saw when I was driving in to work,” he said. “We could see the circulation on it. It wasn’t super strong, but it was there.”

The unsettled weather with hit-and-miss thunderstorms will continue today, Tobin said, but highs are forecast to be in the 80s by the weekend.